


Push

by epithetta



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-05
Updated: 2011-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:48:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epithetta/pseuds/epithetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Ianto tries to make the world as sick as he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push

**Author's Note:**

> Was started for , but for obvious reasons (wordcount) does not qualify now. Mild cribbed version of Isaiah 53:3 inside.

_Thinking about suicide is a potent consolation: it helps us to get through many a bad night._ (Frederich Nietzsche)

 _The suicides to worry about are the ones that you don't see coming, for they are the truest, the most bare. They are a rejection of our social nature, the secret hidden desperation of humanity._ (Anon.)

 

The first few days of his suspension, he cleaned his flat. It wasn't as if it was dirty; he'd barely lived here, preferring to sleep on a cot next to the conversion unit. But it gave him something to do that was reminiscent of his daily activities, and that was helpful for avoiding thinking about it.

He surfed the net, watched some idiotic telly, sat in the café down the road—their coffee was shite, and he could make better at home, so he found that most nights he picked up take away from someplace convenient and sat in front of the computer, reading BBC Wales and illegally downloading episodes of Dexter.

Tosh sent him the links to the support groups, and he'd almost sent her a nasty reply when he remembered that a) he was Ianto Jones, butler supreme, and b) Tosh was just trying to help. Of all of them, she only ever tried to help.

He'd had two beers and was feeling mellow when he used the links in her email and surfed about on the Spousal Survival site. It was a bit of a misnomer. 'Spouse' seemed to mean any partner, actually, a marriage, a long-term relationship, a same-sex partnership. Ianto clicked through the threads and read people's harrowing and tragic (and poorly capitalised) accounts of their spouses dying—accidents, cancer, suicide, gunshots, war, but none of it really hit him. And then—

 _My name is Peter Harring, and I lost my partner, Clive Kirby, months ago at the terrorism incident at One Canada Square in London. I've never even seen the body, but they tell me that he is dead, so it must be true. I find--_

Ianto closed the browser.

***

He stalked Peter Harring. It was easy—Ianto was Torchwood, and better yet, Torchwood with a side of Toshiko-training—to get his IP and then follow it even further, and then just look up his listing and find him, right there, in London, still. Ianto google-earthed his flat and stared at it.

He google-earthed Torchwood One and stared at empty building from his godlike satellite perch. Then he read every post Peter Harring had ever made in the forums—the anguish, the wondering, the descriptions of the funeral, the aching and needing to move on but refusing to do so.

Ianto grit his teeth and clicked the "New Topic" button.

 _My name is James Smith, and I lost my partner six months ago in the Canada One Tower terrorist attack. It hasn't really hit me until just now that she's gone. She left for work like any other day, and I don't think I even remembered to kiss her goodbye…_

***

It didn't take long for Peter to find him. They latched onto the words, they danced around the word 'Torchwood' for a while, because while it hadn't been common knowledge that Torchwood was in the Tower, Peter probably knew that his partner, Clive, worked for Torchwood itself. Even Gwen's daft husband knew that she worked for Torchwood. The word wasn't the secret, just what happened there.

Ianto spent the next five days talking to Peter every night. It was a relief, to talk about Lisa a little, to say things about her that he couldn't tell anyone else. Who could he tell, anyway? Jack? Rhiannon? She hadn't even known about Lisa at all.

He carried the laptop across the flat with him, in the loo, in the bed, reading and chatting and talking to anyone, really, but Peter mostly. He was making himself Pimm's and lemonade when Peter mentioned it.

 **HarringP123:** sometimes i just don't feel like i can go on.  
 **SmithJ24601:** i know. I see her everywhere.  
 **HarringP123:** it's funny, how we should just be trying to move on but, I can't even do his laundry to set it out for donation.

Ianto rolled his eyes and squeezed another lemon in the juicer before typing hastily.

 **SmithJ24601:** i haven't unpacked her things since I moved back here.  
 **HarringP123:** do you ever feel like just ending it?  
 **SmithJ24601:** all the time, yeah.  
 **HarringP123:** how would you do it? i have pills.  
 **SmithJ24601:** I dunno. I have knives or I could make a noose.

There was a long pause, in which time he cleaned out the crisper drawer, a mystery that he had missed it in his first week of binge-cleaning: a half full bag of rubbery carrots and three shriveled-up apples. What looked like a plastic-wrapped package of blueberries, covered in white fuzz. He tossed them unceremoniously into the garbage and stood in front of the computer, waiting, tapping his foot and staring at the screen, as if Peter was really there in the room and could sense that it was his turn to talk.

 **HarringP123:** we should just do it.

Ianto set down his glass and thought about how tall his building was. It had to be tall enough—five floors was more than enough, if he really wanted to be street pizza. Or he could go around the back and aim for the skips, a fitting thing to tidy himself up in the end. On the other hand, the garbage might break his fall. He wasn't expert on this.

 **SmithJ24601:** i think you're right. tonight.  
 **HarringP123:** together, yeah?

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Oh for fuck's sake," he mumbled, "just do it already."

 **SmithJ24601:** okay.  
 **HarringP123:** how will you do it?  
 **SmithJ24601:** i think I'll jump from the building roof. i always wanted to fly, actually.  
 **HarringP123:** i don't think i could do that. but i have a lot of sleeping pills. they proscribed them for me when clive died and i just never took them. and I'm making drinks.  
 **SmithJ24601:** so am I! shite drinks, but still.  
 **HarringP123:** yeah

***

He didn't think about it until his email went unanswered for two days. Then the following thread appeared:

 **NEW TOPIC: Peter Harring, 1976-2007**

Ianto clicked the link to the cut and paste obituary, then sat back in silence. Behind him, the popty-ping beeped and his kettle whistled. He read the entire thread. His stomach flipped.

That was _surreal_.

***

 **JonesSama44:** thinking about it, my stomach is full of rats.  
 **SmithJ24601:** yeah. you're right. that’s what it feels like.  
 **JonesSama44:** i don't even know what they did in that place. do you?  
 **SmithJ24601:** lis always said 'animal testing', but I know she was lying.  
 **JonesSama44:** yeah. john said that if he told me he'd have to kill me. that's pretty funny now.  
 **SmithJ24601:** i keep playing everything in my mind, wondering if i could have made her stay home.  
 **JonesSama44:** he was 23. 23. I can't wrap my brain around it.  
 **SmithJ24601:** she was 23 too.  
 **JonesSama44:** god, everyone says I should move on. how can i move on after this?  
 **SmithJ24601:** i know. her clothes still smell like her. i'm thinking of putting them in plastic bags so they stay that way.  
 **JonesSama44:** do you ever think it would just be easier if it would end?

Ianto sat back from the laptop and sipped his bourbon. The glass thundered on the steel tabletop when he set it back down.

 **SmithJ24601:** all the time. you?  
 **JonesSama44:** I think about jumping off the bridge here.  
 **SmithJ24601:** I thought about that once. I think I'd rather cut my wrists, though. No chance of squirming out  
 **JonesSama44:** I wish I could get a gun.  
 **SmithJ24601:** me too.  
 **JonesSama44:** i can see it from my house  
 **SmithJ24601:** I don't have a bridge here. Where are you?  
 **JonesSama44:** the ely viaduct is close.  
 **SmithJ24601:** me too. we could meet. do it together, yeah?  
 **JonesSama44:** will you hold my hand?  
 **SmithJ24601:** if you hold mine.  
 **JonesSama44:** all right.  
 **SmithJ24601:** okay. promise.

 **NEW TOPIC: Samantha Jones, 1980-2007**

***

They milled about the gravesite. Her husband's grave was still lumpy and sunken, uneven really, bad grass thatching through the straw they used to keep the birds from eating the grass seed. The headstone looked new, as if they had just laid it. They would want to, actually, before the ground got too cold to dig in.

Ianto stared at the glossy casket and tried to feel something, tried to attach the tears in his eyes or the lump in his throat for the body in the box, but it just didn't come. This one was just a girl who loved someone who'd died in London, someone that he might have passed on the way to the cafeteria or loo. He made a mental note to look up John Jones in the database when he got back to the Hub (if he ever got back to the Hub, it had been almost a month), but the name was so common, and Ianto didn't much care actually.

The funeral director had brought the flowers from the parlour and set them up next to the grave and the carpet, and Ianto watched people cannibalise the arrangements for perfect symbols of their affection to toss in the hole after her body. He stared at one bird of paradise off to the side. That was the one he wanted. Lisa would have liked that one. He sat in the folding chair off to the side and watched people leave the gravesite in clumps, sticky groupings of family and friends on their way to the party, where they'd toast Sam with beer and scotch and cake.

"Did you know Sam?" an old woman asked him as she passed, stopping to pat his arm. She offered him tissues from a small packet, the kind meant to be carried in a purse or backpack.

"No," he said, "we were in a support group together." He swiped at his eyes sheepishly, feeling his face redden at the admission. "I guess I thought she was doing better than this."

The woman glanced back at the floral mound, and the coffin slinking slowly with the whirring of mechanics. "Her husband died almost six months ago." She sighed. "I thought moving back here would help, I did. You know, _she was a woman of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,_ yeah?"

Ianto smiled faintly. "Yeah, that I do know."

The woman clasped his arm tighter for a second. "Come to the house," she said, her face earnest. "Sam would want you to."

He must have mumbled something noncommittal but positive, because she left him, and he watched the last of them all pile into the limos and Audis and Vauxhalls and trundle out of the cemetery until he was the only one there.

Ianto slapped his knees and rose to his feet stretching and sniffing the wind for what he knew was there. He brushed the wrinkles from his suit, finally free of blood and debris and Lisa and dry-cleaned and pressed, and meandered to the flowers. The bird of paradise lay off to the side, too gauche to be considered by most guests, too bulbous and unfloral. He plucked its long stem from the arrangement and turned to the open hole.

Should he say something?

"Someone you knew?" Jack asked as he came up behind him. Ianto might have jumped, but he had already known her was there; that smell was hard to forget.

Ianto tossed the flower in the grave. "Not really. Her husband was at Canary Wharf."

Jack's hand clapped his shoulder and he shrugged it off. "Ah. Did you know—"

"I didn't know him either. I met her online. She jumped off a bridge." Ianto massaged his temples with a thumb and middle finger. The sun finally shot through the clouds and lit up the dew that slicked the grass. "It's all a fucking waste," he said, because he didn't know what else to say.

There was a long silence. Something fowl-like cried off in the distance, in the cemetery's little man-made lake. Jack clasped his hands behind him and rocked on the balls of his feet. "Do you want a headstone? Obviously you can't have the body—"

"No," Ianto said quickly. "Nothing."

"Okay then." Jack cocked his head and then pivoted on his heel. Ianto wondered if he was supposed to follow. A great deal of him was done following Jack Harkness.

"Come back Monday," Jack called over his shoulder.

***

 _My name is Rachel, and I lost my husband last year at the attacks on Canada One Tower. I know there aren't a lot of survivors, but sometimes I think I hate them all…_

 **CamRach000:** so what did we settle on?  
 **SmithJ24601:** pills. but they're overly dramatic.  
 **CamRach000:** just like going to sleep, though  
 **SmithJ24601:** well, they say that, but who knows?  
 **CamRach000:** true. i just don't like the idea of cutting myself. i don't think i could bring myself to cut deeply enough.  
 **SmithJ24601:** i know. me too. i might try a noose. if you start high enough it should work.  
 **CamRach000:** i bet you would wank off while you did it. that's supposed to be good  
 **SmithJ24601:** haha maybe. it's a guy thing. dunno if it works for girls.  
 **CamRach000:** well they can't come back and tell us, right? with guys theres evidence.  
 **SmithJ24601:** what a way to go.

 **NEW TOPIC: Rachel Camerson, 1979-2008**

END


End file.
